Steam - batch game updating possible?

F

fleggett

Gawd
Joined
Nov 30, 2004
Messages
546
After awhile of not playing anything via Steam, I purchased the combo Tomb Raider pack that was on sale last weekend. However, I noticed that many of the games in my library were yellowed-out and needed updating. Is there any way to to do a batch update versus right-clicking on each title and choosing "Resume Updating"? I searched through the Steam forums and elsewhere, but couldn't find any topic on this subject, which was very surprising.

Thanks in advance.
 
Steam will automatically download them in the background if you leave the client running. It only updates one title at a time, hence why the others are all paused.
 
EvanH said:
Steam will automatically download them in the background if you leave the client running. It only updates one title at a time, hence why the others are all paused.
Click to expand...

That last part may actually depend on your internet connection or settings. I know that my Steam client will generally download 2-3 titles/updates at once. I think in my case, if it's 4 or more, it'll start queuing them up.
 
The problem is that these yellowed-out games don't update automatically, even when the client is left running overnight with a persistent internet connection. I literally have to right-click on each game and resume the update process before the game will be appear white and playable.

I've had this happen to me in the past. Some games will update automatically as one would expect while others just seem to pause for no apparent reason and require manual intervention.

I guess the real question is - when several games have been paused during the update process, is there any way to unpause them, either partially or in total? Or does each game have be be unpaused one-by-one?
 
I've had weird issues like this where Steam will say several games need updates, won't do it automatically, and when I manually force them to "resume", they don't even download anything.

I just chalk it up to software being weird sometimes.
 
Going to Library -> Downloads doesn't work, as the button on the right only says "II PAUSE ALL". And the button itself doesn't seem to do anything.

There's a conflict going on where one part of Steam believes all the games are fully updated and ready to run, but another that's flagging these games as having been paused during an update. As of now, I'm looking at 31 yellowed-out games that have, for whatever reason, been flagged as having been paused in mid-update, which prompted my original question.

Maverick96, it seems to be converting these games to a more efficient format. Once the conversion is complete (which varies depending on the size of the local game files), it verifies the conversion with Steam's servers and almost always downloads a small bit of missing content.

As I mentioned earlier, this has happened to me on several prior occasions, most notably when I reinstall Windows (my Steam directory is on another drive). There doesn't seem to be a way within the Steam client to highlight a block of games as you would normally do in a typical file dialogue and perform a common action on that block, which seems very odd and terribly clunky.
 
I think the way it works is it will just try to update as many at a time as it can for the amount of bandwidth you have, so if no limit set then it will just go full throttle, and pause some when your connection starts to choke them off. very slapdash and inefficient but it gets them all up to date eventually, thats why I usually end up manually doing them one at a time anyway.
 
Steam converted the data format they store game files in not too long ago. Some games will need to be converted to this new format before they can be updated which appears to require manually updating them and telling the client to convert the game files to the new format.

Make sure steam is up to date, restart it, then try updating your games. All else fails, contact steam support.
 
If that's the case, it sounds like the bandwidth detection mechanism is broken within the client in that, when Steam stops updating due to bandwidth limitations, it (sometimes) can't detect when bandwidth is available again, so those un-updated games are left in limbo until manual intervention.

This is why I wish Steam worked more like a traditional file browser instead of a single-selection launcher. I can only imagine what a pain this is for people with hundreds of games in their libraries.
 
yea at this point I've totally given up on auto update, I just leave everything paused until there's a game I want to update/install, then just manually bring it up to date. for those with so many games it wouldn't really be practical any other way, you'd constantly be bombarded with patches all the time. even if you have a good connection, it's annoying when some random update lags it up while you're in the middle of something.

glad they finally implemented client side bandwidth capping, haven't messed with it yet so not sure how well it works though.
 
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